Christian support

Mainstream Christian leaders sometimes make headlines by bashing Israel. Just
two months ago, Jewish leaders across the denominational and ideological
spectrum were shocked by a letter signed by 15 leaders of Christian churches
calling on Congress to reconsider aid provided to Israel because of alleged
human rights violations.

In July, the Presbyterian Church (USA) voted yet
again on a motion calling to divest from companies whose products are supposedly
used “in violations of Palestinian human rights.” As was the case in previous
anti-Israel votes of this kind dating back to 2004, Presbyterians rejected the
proposal.

Earlier this year during their quadrennial General Conference,
Methodists rejected a proposal by anti- Israel elements in the Church to divest
Church assets from companies doing business in Israel. And while Methodists and
Presbyterians have the most aggressively anti-Israel lobbies among liberal
Protestant denominations, Episcopalians, Evangelical Lutherans, Anglicans and
members of the United Church of Christ have debated policies intended to bring
direct or indirect pressure on Israel to compromise with
Palestinians.

That is why it is so refreshing to read the “Jerusalem
Declaration” released this week in the capital by representatives of mainline
Protestant churches calling themselves the Protestant Consultation on Israel and
the Middle East (PCIME). In a remarkably evenhanded description of sectarian
tensions in the Middle East, representatives of Methodist, Anglican and Lutheran
churches, among others, from Europe, North America and Africa rightly noted that
“the forces that refuse to tolerate the existence of a Jewish state are fiercely
intolerant of other religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle
East.”

The document cited Coptic Christians in Egypt and Assyrian
Christians in Iraq as examples of religious minorities that are regularly
persecuted at the hands of “aggressive Islamist movements.”

In contrast,
Christian citizens of Israel “enjoy equal rights of citizenship and a good
standard of living despite occasional frictions.”

Members of PCIME also
said they were “distressed to see how certain European and North American church
officials approach the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as if it were a zero-sum
game.” And they repudiated the “replacement theology” that claimed Israel had no
further place in God’s plans. Special mention was made of the “Kairos Palestine”
document, which was signed in December 2009 by over 2,000 leading Palestinian
priests and laymen from all the major Christian denominations. PCIME rejected
Kairos for placing all the blame for the conflict on the shoulders of Israel and
for advocating a one-state solution, and suggested that “intended or not” such a
stance encourages “the forces that have vowed to destroy Israel.”

Unlike
more fundamentalist Protestants, clergy in the mainline denominations tend to
have a less literal reading of the New Testament. They are, as a result, more
likely to contemporize the fight to establish the kingdom of God as a call to
support progressive political causes. This “evanescing into secularism,” as
Walter Russell Mead once referred to it, leads many liberal Protestant clergy
and officials – many of whom with a sincere desire to pursue justice – to fall
under the sway of organizations and movements with rabidly anti-Zionist or
anti-American agendas.

But it could be that while mainline churches’
clergy and officials tend to adhere to “progressive” political agendas, the
rank-and-file are far more moderate and evenhanded when it comes to issues such
as the plight of Christians in the Middle East or the Israeli- Palestinian
conflict. This would explain the repeated failures by anti-Israel lobbies within
the Presbyterian and Methodist churches to pass divestment
resolutions.

PCIME’s “Jerusalem Declaration” probably better reflects the
sentiments of the vast majority of mainline Protestants throughout the world. We
hope that when PCIME’s representatives return to their respective congregations
they will set in motion a discourse that will lead to a fairer, more evenhanded
treatment of Israel within mainline churches.